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Monday, July 16, 2012

The old man stood about a foot shorter than the others gathered in his clinic. This
made the tarnished streaks in his silvery hair easy to spot, but he still
combed it so that the thin ivory strands stretched across the barren areas of
his scalp. It was like this every morning. Perhaps what
time and experience had not provided him in stature, it had offered back in
depth. Years of refinement and wear—buried in his
eyes. It was such that his age reflected most profoundly not from
the specks and the creases of his skin, nor from the tarnish in his hair, but
from a shadowy well within those eyes. A flickering, rippling depth
that you could catch brief glimpses of, magnified through the thick lenses
framed upon his nose. And it was with those eyes, and in spite of
his height, that he peered keenly down at those around him. He spoke
bluntly, moved deliberately, and gave orders without wasting words on common
courtesies. His thick Vietnamese accent delivered his speech in
rolling jabs that never quite crossed the line into rude. But his
presence—his quiet, cavernous presence—brushed uncompromisingly against my
senses. It was the entirety of this old man’s presence that
irritated me from day one.

Together, we were perhaps nothing if not an ill-formed
match. An intense, eager, yet green medical student teamed with an
intense, stubborn, and seasoned family physician. It was determined
from the start that I would prove myself to this old man. And from
the start, I quickly realized this man had no desire to prove anything to
anyone. The pace and fashion in which he worked was fixed,
mechanical—like a piston, or maybe a turbine set long ago—still steadily
driving and being driven by the charts, the exams, the
prescriptions. With a quick flurry of questions, a few inquisitive
glances, and a practiced touch, he moved from patient to patient until the
lights in the waiting room dimmed and it was time to clock out. It
was an inertia built up over a lifetime. And the unwavering force
with which it moved caused everything around it to bend. I imagined
how in his twenty-seven years of working at the same clinic, he had witnessed
everything around him evolve. Computers being installed, electronic
records being implemented, new systems, new nurses, new policies, and new
technology—all buzzing in a colorful blur around him. And I imagined
him standing calmly in middle of it. An aging yet unmoving
constant. Like an ocean carving fissures into the side of a
mountain, the old man’s steady presence swelled up against those around him,
causing all of us—patients, nurses, and me—to bend and abide.

“Good morning, Doctor Pham.” I offered the same
greeting each morning as he walked into the clinic. A brief nod and
a thin smile indicated his readiness. For six weeks, we operated
just as we were—two entities set into motion sixty years apart. We clocked
in at the same time each day and clocked out one right after the other each
night. Yet in all the time and space bracketed between these choreographed
bookends, we managed to operate side by side, but never quite
together. It was as if the inner workings of his faded exterior
hummed in constant disharmony to some of my most basic values. And
as a result, my frustration simmered beneath a thinning
patience. Only behind closed doors and beyond the old man’s ear
would I allow it to escape in harsh whistles from every pore of my
skin. But for the most part, I kept my grievances a secret smolder,
hidden from the old man yet fanned daily by watching him practice his stiff,
spindling brand of medicine. There was something in the jaded
physician’s disposition that must have been forged fiercely long ago, and as a
result presented itself more rigid and ill-fitting than might otherwise be
expected. For patient after patient left the clinic having battled
in those hurried moments to steal from the man some small resolution to their
private concerns, only to be blown backwards by the invisible force of his
forward-churning style. It was a style driven by the weight of his
unbending disposition which he yielded with a mechanical ease. And
it stood upon that oceanic depth which pooled within those black eyes, guarded
behind the thick frames which he cleaned intermittently on his coat
sleeve. The grand effect was an undertow that remained placid at the
surface, but swept rippling hues of frustration through the old clinic and
clean out the door. In a way, I drew a strange comfort from noticing
this. Every clenched jaw and furrowed brow meant that the agitated
secrets which bristled beneath my façade were being shared among others who happened
into the old man’s dusty wake.

I turned the ignition and with one last pained sigh, my truck
pulled out of the parking lot, away from the faded white building and the
sunburnt sign that simply read “clinic.” I didn’t look back as I
drove away that final time, and seldom have I since. The irritation
that circulated within me for six weeks gradually dwindled and eventually
vacated altogether. Perhaps to haunt some other host. But
every now and again, I can’t help but think about the old man. In my
less restful nights, I wonder if maybe it wasn’t really his disposition or
demeanor that clashed so harshly against my own, but rather the injustice of
time itself—strewn across his every wrinkle and draped in his every
movement. It was an injustice largely shifted in my favor during the
snapshot of our interaction, and magnified by the coincidence of our
proximity. By the nature of my youth, time still presented itself as
a dimension soft and moldable, like clay. Yet being next to the old
man provided proof that this would not forever be the case. For the old
man, his allotment had already been shaped. Only the last intricate
details remained to be sculpted, and as we stood beside each other in
that clinic, we stared from opposite ends of time’s unforgiving canyon, eyes
fixated on different sights within its depths. And perhaps it was
exactly this difference in perspective—this ever-shifting injustice—that
irritated me most deeply. When I think back to the old man, I wonder
if all the discomfort I harbored poured forth from a more basic
anxiety. A fear that the time grasped before me might solidify
before I can mold within it a fraction of my dreams. It seems to me
that youth has an easy way of staring into the canyon of time, giving little notice to the ledge on the other side, and the old man who will one day
stand upon it.